Australia needs an honest reckoning with the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long hold over Australian politics. Without that, we cannot shift to a principled stand against ceaseless expansion.
Companies are buying renewable energy certificates to meet their emissions targets, but new research suggests that the bulk of these purchases do not lead to actual emission reductions.
The war in Ukraine threatens to turn back the clock on Russia’s climate progress, with some calling on the country to leave the Paris Agreement and roll back environmental regulations.
Managing the transition to a net-zero emissions economy must be a priority task for the next government. Our strategic and economic success depends on it.
The Coalition’s climate policy is consistent with a very dangerous 3°C of global warming. But one party is comfortably consistent with keeping warming at safe levels.
With the world on track to blow the carbon budget for 1.5°C before the end of this decade, we must use offsetting carefully. It can no longer be a substitute for deep emissions cuts.
Olaf Morgenstern, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
The current estimate is that Earth would warm by 1.5°C to 4.5°C if emissions were to double on pre-industrial levels. The range has remained stubbornly wide, despite improved climate modelling.
A global treaty on plastic pollution must incentivize a take-make-reuse waste management system and include quantitative targets based on geography-specific emissions.
Many see carbon markets as key to channelling billions of dollars into reducing carbon emissions and protecting forests, but they also put the well-being of communities at risk.
Mark Howden, Australian National University; Joy Pereira, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia), and Roberto Sánchez, Colegio de la Frontera Norte
The IPCC is the global authority on climate change. Their new report paints a worrying picture of climate impacts already affecting billions of people, economies and the environment.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, the agenda for 2022 includes key developments to tackle the connected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
On the tail of yet another year of climate disasters, 2022 ushers in the final version of the Paris Agreement, making it a functioning global climate treaty. But it alone can’t save us.